For a Western scholar, studying the cadre and personnel management
system (ganbu yu renshi guanli zhidu) in the Communist Party of China
(CPC) is an endeavour fraught with difficulties. First and most
basically, there is no clear definition of the concept of cadre (ganbu)
available--making it extremely difficult to determine and delimitate the
field of study. Second, statistics and hard empirical data are not easy
to access--as information on cadre management often is classified neibu
(internal) or jimi (secret)--and therefore, in principle, unavailable to
foreign researchers. Third, the documents and regulations concerning
cadre management use many concepts which are almost impossible to
translate into Western languages and discourse. Nevertheless, as a
deeper and more nuanced understanding of the Chinese political system
requires a basic understanding of cadre management, the subject has
attracted growing interest in the West.

Most studies on the Chinese cadre system fail to draw on the
theoretical insights provided by the existing body of literature on
elites in general, (1) and in relation to China in particular. (2) This
seems to be related to a number of factors. First, elite studies as such
are currently a neglected discipline in political science research. (3)
Instead, there is a focus on electoral systems and electoral behaviour,
constitutional choice and rational choice theory. Second, the implosion
of communist/socialist systems in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe
destroyed much of the empirical basis for theory generation and
development in the field of comparative communist studies. Third, since
the 1960s, a number of often conflicting approaches to the study of
Chinese politics have emerged. Most of them have dealt with conflict and
change and the factors that seemingly make the system dysfunctional.
Only in recent years have some scholars argued that the political system
is, in fact, holding together rather well. (4) What makes the Party hold
together is organisation and power--as embodied in the political elite.
(5) Fourth, and finally, to the extent elite concepts are applied in the
Chinese case, they tend to relate to studies of the composition and
working of top government and Party organs such as the State Council,
Politburo or Central Committee and their membership. (6) Rarely are they
used to discuss the wider group of cadres from which future leaders are
recruited. This has unfortunately severely limited the usefulness of the
elite concept in analysing how the Chinese political system works.

THE CONCEPT OF CADRE

Cadre (from Latin: quadrus = square) is originally a military
concept. Its current use denotes three main significances: (1) basic
structure or framework; (2) a nucleus of trained personnel around which
a larger organisation can be built and trained; (3) a small, unified
group organised to instruct or lead a larger group. In France, the term
is often used to denote the officials and upper-level and middle-level
managers educated at the grandes ecoles. They are supposed to exhibit
leadership qualities, predisposing them to take up duties for the
nation. (7) In communist one-Party systems, the concept refers back to
the Russian Revolution. In this sense, the cadres are the leaders of the
revolution and the masses the followers. In his famous organisational
manual, What is to Be Done?, Lenin describes how such a vanguard of the
revolutionary class should be created and trained to lead the
revolution. (8) This vanguard was supposed to act as the central nucleus
of the Party and was expected to "devote to the revolution not
their free evenings--but their whole life". (9) These
revolutionaries were regarded as the "lions" of the communist
movement. (10)

After the 1949 revolution in China, cadres usually referred to
people with responsible or leading positions (fuzeren/lingdaoren) within
an organisation, or people who assumed responsibility for specific
political tasks. Accordingly, a person's status as a cadre did not
necessarily involve membership of the CPC, although in practice this was
often the case, especially for leading cadres (i.e., cadres above the
county-level).

During the 1950s, there was a regularisation of the cadre corps. A
complex wage system was established and a more detailed ranking system
was introduced. According to a Party handbook published in 1958, cadres
included the following personnel: (1) employees from clerical personnel
and above; (2) industrial technicians; (3) agro-technicians; (4)
maritime technicians; (5) public health technicians of middle level and
above; (6) scientific technicians; (8) news and publishing personnel;
(8) teaching personnel; (9) personnel in culture and the arts; (10) and
translators. (11) In short, cadres were defined by simple bureaucratic
distinctions according to their education and whether or not they were
employed by the state.

Since then, there has been no fundamental change in this
categorisation. However, all along an undercurrent of doubt has existed
as to whether such a purely bureaucratic distinction would suffice and
therefore regular ideological campaigns have been conducted to ensure
the continuous political and ideological education and training of
cadres and to prevent the revolutionary "lions" from turning
into bureaucratic "foxes". Also internal distinctions have
been introduced to distinguish different categories of cadres. The most
important is the distinction between ordinary cadres and leading cadres.
(12) Leading cadres (lingdao ganbu) are cadres ranked at division
(county) level and above. They form the power elite in Anthony
Gidden's definition of the concept. (13)

NUMBER OF CADRES

As it is difficult to define the concept of cadre, it is
concomitantly not easy to find reliable information on the number of
cadres in China. In 2000, the CPC Party History Publishing House
published a 19-volume publication on the organisational history of the
CPC, which contains statistics on the evolution and composition of
Chinese cadres from 1949 to 1998. (14) According to this source, there
are 40.5 million cadres in China. "Leading cadres" number
508,025, accounting for only eight per cent of the total cadre corps.
Fully 92 per cent (466,355) of these people work at the provincial level
and below, such as local city and county Party secretaries and mayors;
the rest work in the central organs in Beijing.

The most important leading cadres are those at the ministerial
(provincial) level and above. Since central ministers, provincial
governors and first Party secretaries are at the same administrative
rank, this level includes present as well as former cabinet ministers
and provincial governors and Party secretaries. There are only 2,562 of
these "high level cadres" (gaoji ganbu), of which 888 work at
the Centre (Zhongyang) in Beijing. (15) They all belong to the Central
Committee's nomenklatura.

Of the total number of cadres, 47.5 per cent or 19.2 million work
in the so-called shiye danwei (public service units or non-profit
organisations), 35.2 per cent or 14.3 million in production enterprises
and 17.2 per cent or 7.0 million in government and Party organs. (16)
Cadres in government and Party organs and agencies are the backbone of
the political system. They are also called "civil servants"
(gongwuyuan) and are regulated by the civil service administrative
system in addition to being managed by the CPC's cadre regulations.
According to some sources, the number of civil servants has risen to
about 10 million. (17)

It is often assumed that most cadres are members of the CPC.
However, the 2000 statistics showed that only 15.4 million (38.2 per
cent) of the 40.5 million-strong cadre corps are Party members. However,
among leading cadres, 95.3 per cent are Party members. (18) The power
elite are recruited from the 15.4 million cadres that carry a Party
membership. Therefore, cadres with an ambition to make it to the power
elite normally apply for membership of the Party. This means that in
order to qualify for entrance into the power elite, a given individual
should combine cadre status with Party membership. It follows logically
that Party membership alone is not enough to qualify for elite status.

In short, the power hierarchy is structured in the following way:
there are 60 million Party members (1998). Of these, 15.4 million (25
per cent) are cadres. The remaining 45 million do not have cadre status,
i.e., they do not hold positions that involve real authority. The
leading cadres constitute 508,025 people (3.3 per cent) of the 15.4
million cadres. Furthermore, the power elite consist of those among the
leading cadres that hold Party membership. Since 95.3 per cent of the
leading cadres are Party members, the power elite consists of 484,148
cadres. The very top stratum--the 2,562 gaoji ganbu--are all Party
members. Of these individuals, 888 work at the centre of power in
Beijing. This is the "elite within the elite"--those who
really run China. One way to conceptualise this power structure can be
depicted in Figure 1.

Recruitment to the top levels of the pyramid takes place at the
bottom level, where non-CPC cadres with an ambition to make it to the
power elite will apply for Party membership. To qualify for entrance
into the power elite requires both cadre status and Party membership.
For the very few leading cadres that have not yet become Party members,
this is their last chance. If they do not succeed, they will not move
further up the power hierarchy since bureau-level cadres are almost
entirely recruited from leading cadres that carry a Party membership.
Only in rare instances is it possible for non-CPC cadres to enter the
ministerial-level of the power hierarchy. But it does occur on occasion.
Recent examples include the appointment of Wan Gang as Minister of
Science and Technology and the appointment of Chen Zhu as Minister of
Health. Their appointments were part of a mid-term move under Hu Jintao
to empower the Chinese People's Political Consultative Congress
(CPPCC) and give credence to the theory of "multi-party
cooperation" (duo dang hezuo). However, since these men are not
Party members, they cannot occupy the important Party secretary job in
their respective ministries, and this severely restricts their actual
powers.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Clearly, the power elite are dependent on the 40.5 million cadres
for governing the country and in recruiting future leaders. Active
support is also needed from the 45 million Party members that are not
part of the state administrative bureaucracy. They may not be in
positions of real authority, but they are considered to form the social
and ideological basis of the power system. Moreover, when a Party member
enters the cadre corps, his chances for promotion to the power elite are
comparatively high. In general, as long as these two groups act in
concert, the power system can be maintained.

Nomenklatura

In managing the leading cadres, the CPC has a number of instruments
at its disposal. In terms of leadership selection and appointment, the
most important is the so-called nomenklatura system. The term is
originally Russian and developed during the Soviet Union. It can be
defined as "a list containing those leading officials directly
appointed by the Party, as well as those officials about whom
recommendations for appointment, release or transfer may be made by
other bodies, but which require the Party's approval". (19)
This means that the nomenklatura list actually consists of two lists:
one which is solely handled by the Organisation Department of the Party,
and another which involves management by other state and Party organs.
The Party mainly has its focus on the former list, but does have the
possibility of exercising veto power over the latter list. Moreover, the
nomenklatura system includes lists of personnel recommended for future
appointment. Through this elaborate system, the Party controls the
selection and appointment of leaders to the most important positions in
Chinese society. At the central level, the Organisational Department of
the Central Committee manages a list of top positions in government and
Party organs at the central and provincial level, as well as the heads
of the most prestigious institutes of higher learning and the 53 largest
companies. As the nomenklatura system is a system for leadership
selection and appointment, non-Party cadres in leading positions are
also managed by the nomenklatura. (20)

The concept of bianzhi is closely related to nomenklatura. In fact,
some scholars of Chinese politics have perceived bianzhi to be the
Chinese way of denoting the nomenklatura system. (21) This is not
correct. Bianzhi usually refers to the authorised number of personnel in
a unit, office, or organisation and associated budget outlays in the
form of salary and allowances. (22) The term is often translated as
"establishment".

There are three main forms of bianzhi: administrative bianzhi
(xingzheng bianzhi), enterprise bianzhi (qiye bianzhi), and the bianzhi
which applies to public service units (shiye danwei bianzhi). The
administrative bianzhi is crucial for the layout of the political
system. It stipulates the number of organs (jigou bianzhi) and the
number of personnel (renyuan bianzhi) in these organs. The difference
between bianzhi and nomenklatura is that a bianzhi list specifies and
ranks the various organs and positions in an administrative setup,
including detailing the administrative functions of these organs,
whereas the nomenklatura list specifies which leadership positions in
the bianzhi configuration the Party controls. The bianzhi system is
managed by the Central Commission for Institutional Bianzhi (Zhongyang
jigou bianzhi weiyuanhui) which is placed directly under the
Party's Central Committee and is thus managed and controlled by the
Party. (23) At the provincial and local levels, there are also
committees dealing with bianzhi work. As is the case for local
nomenklatura work, they are directed by local Party committees.

In sum, by regulating and managing the bianzhi as well as the
nomenklatura, the Party exercises control over the entire administrative
apparatus and its cadre corps from central to local level. Personnel
policy is the heart of power in a Leninist system.

ROTATION AND TRANSFER

One instrument of control associated with the nomenklatura system
is the so-called cadre transfer system. (24) For leading cadres below
ministerial and vice-ministerial level, the rules are that they have to
be transferred after their second term, i.e., after a maximum period of
10 years. (25) They will either be transferred to a new higher-ranked
job or stay at the same level, but without leadership responsibility.
Recently, a new form of rotation has been introduced according to which
central officials are rotated to local levels in order to take up local
top positions (di yi bashou) as mayor or county head. (26) In the same
way, local leaders are transferred to central positions. It is reported
that local officials' enthusiasm to take positions at the central
level is quite high, but the same enthusiasm is not reached among
officials at the central level. The problem seems to be that if a person
is not transferred temporarily while maintaining employment (bianzhi) in
his/her original work unit (guazhi), but is actually assuming a
leadership position at the local level (renzhi), he/she is not
guaranteed a return to the central level.

Pantouflage

An interesting form of rotation takes place between big business
and the political world. Thus, government officials can be transferred
to take up leading positions in the state-owned companies and vice
versa. This kind of rotation has certain parallels to the French system
of appointing members of the civil service elite to one of the
country's top business positions after having spent a decade or so
working for the state, often in a ministerial private office--a practice
known as pantouflage (literally "shuffling across"). (27)
These civil servants are all educated at French prestigious grande
ecoles which give access to the grands corps; from there, they are
"parachuted" into top business. So attendance at a leading
grande ecole followed by membership of the grands corps provides one of
the most secure routes to the top of the French business hierarchy. In
Japan, the term amakudari denotes the widespread practice of senior
officials taking up positions upon retiring from government. (28) In the
United States, the "revolving door" between the bureaucracy
and the business world is commonplace, whereas in the Nordic countries,
this practice is rarely seen.

In the Chinese case, examples of pantouflage include Li
Lihui's transfer in 2004 from vice-governor of Hainan province to
the position of president of the Bank of China, or when Zhang Qingwei in
2008 was moved from serving as Minister of the Commission of Technology,
Science and Industry for Defence to the corporate world to become
chairman of the newly formed Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China.
(29) A third example is Zhou Yongkang who was appointed Vice-Minister of
the Ministry of Petroleum in 1985. When this ministry was abolished in
1988, Zhou Yongkang was appointed deputy general manager of the newly
formed China National Petroleum Corporation and he advanced to become
general manager of the corporation in 1996. Two years later, he was
appointed Minister of Land and Resources and returned to central
government work. Subsequently, Zhou was promoted to the Political Bureau
and put in charge of the politics and law system (zheng-fa xitong),
particularly public security.

In China, there are even more examples of the reverse process,
i.e., top business leaders moving into state and Party leading
positions. Examples include Xiao Yaqing who worked as President of the
Aluminium Corporation of China (CHINALCO) before he was transferred in
February 2009 to Deputy General Secretary of the State Council. In 2003,
Wei Liucheng was transferred serving as General Manager of the China
National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) to become Governor of Hainan
Province. Chen Chuanping was transferred from being Chairman of Taiyuan
Steel Company to serve as the Vice-Governor of Shanxi. And recently,
Sinopec CEO Su Shulin became the Governor of Fujian. There are many more
similar examples. In fact, a closer look at the biographies of
China's governors and vice-governors reveals that as many as 52 of
them have a business background. In government, 25 ministers and
vice-ministers worked in business before joining the Party. (30) This
shows that Party and state organs increasingly use the large business
groups as a recruitment base for filling important state and Party
positions and it is a clear example of the Party's continued
authority in rotating its talents among different sectors of society and
economy.

CEOs who move to a government position acquire a bureaucratic
ranking which is highly coveted in China and compensates for the fact
that they experience a substantial drop in salary. They keep their rank
when they move back to business. However, the effect of this is
mitigated by the fact that informally bureaucratic ranking still takes
place among Chinese SOEs and their CEOs and board chairmen, even though
the system was announced to be abolished already in 2001. (31) An
indication of the continued impact of administrative ranking is that
leaders of the nomenklatura companies can be moved to positions of
vice-ministerial or ministerial level, (32) but bureaucrats at
ministerial level can normally not be rotated to a business position.
The career paths of Zhang Qingwei and Zhou Yongkang show that it is
possible to move from a government position to a position in business
and back again, or from business to government and back again--further
illustrating the "revolving door" between Party, government
and big business in China. (33) In France, pantouflage occurs among
graduates of the elite grande ecoles. In China, the precondition for
pantouflage is membership of the CPC. Thus all CEOs of the central
corporations under control of the State Assets Supervision and
Administration Commission (SASAC) are senior Party members.

Their Party positions are the reason why they can be moved to take
up positions which do not make much sense from a business point of view.
A case in point is the 2004 reshuffle of the top executives of the three
Chinese telecommunication companies, which took place almost overnight
and without prior notice to the public shareholders. (34) The incident
was a clear demonstration of the Party's authority over leadership
appointment in the nomenklatura companies. Similar display of ultimate
Party power over the business world occurred in December 2008 when China
Eastern Airlines CEO, Li Fenghua, was replaced by the Chairman of China
Southern Airlines, Liu Shaoyong, and the Deputy General Manager of Air
China swapped positions with the Deputy Party Secretary of China
Eastern, Gao Jianxiong. The most recent example occurred in April 2011
when Fu Chengyu, Chairman and Party Secretary of CNOOC, was suddenly
appointed Chairman and Party Secretary of rival oil company Sinopec. At
the same time, it was announced that the new chairman and Party
Secretary of CNOOC would be Wang Yilin, the former Deputy General
Manager at China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), the third major
oil company. It is hard to imagine such reshuffles taking place without
strong political considerations.

The "revolving door" function in practice, however, is
shrouded in mystery. The examples mentioned above all comprise officials
and business leaders at ministerial or vice-ministerial level. Thus they
will all be on the central nomenklatura managed by the Central
Organisation Department (Zhongyang Zuzhi Bu). But how this Department
makes its decisions to rotate leaders between the political world and
the business world is unknown to outside observers. As scholars have no
way of knowing the reasons and background for these rotations and
transfers, many resort to prosopographical studies of Chinese political
and business elites, constructing career and networks databases of
individual top leaders. The result is the proliferation of factional
studies of a highly speculative nature.

THE CIVIL SERVICE SYSTEM

In 1993, in order to "separate Party and government"
(dang-zheng fenkai), China introduced a civil service system. In 2005,
preliminary civil service regulations were turned into a Civil Service
Law. (35) By now, a series of laws and regulations exists pertaining to
the functioning and authority of the civil servants. (36) It seems clear
that all civil servants are considered cadres and are therefore also
regulated by cadre regulations. In fact, the new Civil Service Law of
December 2005 stipulates that when other regulations concerning the
appointment, dismissal and supervision of leading civil servants exist,
then these regulations apply. By this formulation, it is indicated that
the Party's regulations for leading cadres take priority over the
Civil Service Law.

Civil servants form the backbone of the Chinese bureaucracy. They
are the primary instrument by which the Party governs and controls the
country. However, similar to the number of cadres, an exact estimation
of the number of civil servants is difficult to estimate with any
precision. Even the Chinese authorities do not appear to know. If we use
the category of "employees in organs of the Communist Party of
China, government agencies, People's Political Consultative
Conference, democratic parties, non-governmental organisations, and
religious organisations" and deduct the number of logistical
personnel, one arrives at 10.1 million civil servants serving
nationally. (37) It is noteworthy that the concept of the civil servant
covers all state employees from a section (ke) member to the Prime
Minister and President of the People's Republic of China. Thus, the
President is remunerated according to general civil service wage
stipulations.

This leadership system is completely different from that of the
West. In China a prospective leader starts as a section member in a
Party or State organ and works his way up the hierarchy as section
leader, division leader, department leader, minister and finally may
become Prime Minister or President. In short, leadership selection and
promotion occur as a vertical process within the bureaucratic
apparatus--whereas in Western countries, leaders enter the top of the
power pyramid horizontally as a result of elections.

The result is a leadership selection and promotion system where top
leaders are not "helicoptered" into top position, but work
their way up through the system observing certain rules and norms
concerning age, educational qualifications, as well as gender and
nationality distribution. It is a leadership system characterised by
regular evaluation by colleagues and superiors and continuous training
in Party schools and various training centres for civil servants. (38)
Top civil servants and business leaders are even sent abroad on
month-long intensive training courses where they learn about alternative
political, economic and social models and international management
practices. The University of Cambridge, Harvard University and the
Copenhagen Business School all run such programmes. It is a system where
state and Party cadres are not promoted according to popular support and
appeal, but according to inner-Party norms of behaviour and political
orientation.

DIFFICULTIES AND CHALLENGES

On paper, this system looks extremely impressive. It portrays a
meritocratic leadership system where chance, luck and sudden political
fashion and impulses play a lesser role than in the West. The main
drawback is the lack of accountability and transparency in the
decision-making process. How are decisions made and by whom according to
which fields of decision-making? An example: in the West, business
leaders are not only evaluated by the board of their companies, they are
ultimately evaluated by the reaction by the market to the decisions they
make. Politicians are not only evaluated by their constituencies, but
also by the media and public opinion. In China, in the absence of such
public mechanisms of evaluation, the Party and state personnel systems
make these determinations. Bo Xilai, Chongqing's recently suspended
Politbureau member, attempted to go beyond these norms and instead tried
to establish his own political platform based on popular support. If he
had succeeded in obtaining a seat on the standing committee of the
Politbureau, it would have seriously undermined the promotion and
appointment system within the Party. The Bo Xilai debacle also
highlights the danger of corruption. This is a phenomenon which
threatens Party legitimacy and its capacity to govern. Sensing the
potential problem, in October 2004, Vice President Zeng Qinghong warned
in an important article published in the People's Daily that
maintaining and actually strengthening the capacity to rule was a
"life-and-death" matter for the CPC and its cadres. (39)

It is also not clear whether Chinese officials are to be classified
as civil servants or cadres. In 2008, a semi-independent State Bureau of
Civil Servants was established within the Ministry of Human Resources
and Social Security indicating that civil servants should be managed by
the state's personnel departments. However, regulations pertaining
to civil servants are often issued in the name of the State Council as
well as in the name of the CPC Central Organisation Department. This
reinforces the view that civil servants are still primarily regarded as
cadres and therefore primarily managed by cadre regulations and
ultimately the Party and not the State. A recent trend among Party
officials is in fact to restrict the concept of cadres to cover only
civil servants, i.e., the core bureaucracy.

For Westerners studying civil servants, cadres and cadre management
in China, a major obstacle is to understand the precise meaning of
Chinese administrative concepts. Examples include concepts such as
bianzhi, kou and xitong. Distinctions between, for example, xuanren and
weiren, pinren and pinyong, and guazhi and renzhi, as well as between
the various methods of evaluation and appraisal, are also not easily
understood. These difficulties point to the necessity of conducting more
indigenous research, i.e., understanding Chinese administrative terms
and practices from within before attempting a translation into Western
terms. Too many Western researchers do not take Chinese administrative
concepts seriously, claiming that the key to an understanding of how
China works is not official concepts, but informal practices and
networks.

CADRE DEVELOPMENT AND TALENT

The recent promulgation of a plan for managing cadres over the
coming decade underlines the regime's concern about cadre
management. (40) The plan stipulates that "the key lies in building
a high-quality cadre contingent that include Party and government
cadres, cadres in management functions in enterprises and cadres in the
area of science and technology". Thus the cadre management system
will continue to function in both Party and government as well as in
enterprises and in the research and educational area. The system is not
only a control system, but also a method to develop and train talent.
This is a key aspect of current cadre management in China. Whether the
system develops in the direction of resilient authoritarianism or
competitive authoritarianism, the quality of public officials is of
outmost importance. In this respect, China has learned from the
Singapore model, a good example of how competitive authoritarianism can
develop into a long-term solution. (41)

CONCLUSION

Cadres in China have become better educated and are younger than
the case in Mao's time. About 80 per cent of leading cadres
(defined as cadres at county level and above) have some kind of college
education, and as for ju-level cadres, the proportion is 88 per cent.
Clearly age and education play a key role in selecting new leaders at
the various levels of the system and there is a new meritocratic
political elite emerging which is different in outlook and background
from the revolutionary "lions" of the past. New guidelines and
regulations have been adopted with stipulations concerning open
appointment and selection of cadres and filling of official positions
and examination. These include a "public notification system"
for filling positions below ting-level and experiments with
multi-candidate elections for leading government and Party posts;
regular job rotation from section level and above; strengthening the
supervision of cadres by introducing clear measures for performance
evaluation combined with public feedback on the quality of work done.
There will also be flexible remuneration and pecuniary rewards to high
performers. Finally, open recruitment notices for CEO recruitment to a
number of SASAC companies have recently been introduced.

However, the nomenklatura system is still in place--and, in recent
years, the Party has actually strengthened its role in managing the
cadre force. This is especially the case for the leading cadres, which
form the political elite that rule China. The Party instinctively knows
that if it loses control of its cadres, it risks losing control of the
country. Moreover, in recent years, the Party's Organisation
Department has been involved in drawing up and circulating all major
guidelines for cadre management at central as well as at local levels.
The Party is clearly not about to loosen its grip on how China's
future elite is selected and trained.

The majority of the rank and file cadre corps does not hold Party
membership. Thus, there is no direct correlation between the number of
cadres and the number of Party members. However, more than 95 per cent
of the leading cadres are Party members, and from ju-level and above,
Party membership is a sine qua non for career advancement. This fact,
combined with the nomenklatura system and widespread use of pantouflage,
make it possible for the Party to control elite recruitment and
circulation in China.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to David Shambaugh for his suggestions and comments
and for inviting me to participate in the conference "Party
Building and Reforming the Communist Party of China" held in
Beijing in June 2011. I am also most grateful to the conference
participants for comments on a previous draft of this article.

(2) In the 1960s and 1970s, a number of pioneering studies on the
Chinese elite system were published. See, for example, the contributions
to Robert A. Scalapino, Elites in the People's Republic of China
(Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1972). See also A. Doak
Barnett (with a contribution by Ezra Vogel), Cadres, Bureaucracy, and
Political Power in Communist China (New York: Columbia Press, 1967);
Michel C. Oksenberg, "Local Leaders in Rural China, 1962-1965:
Individual Attributes, Bureaucratic Positions, and Political
Recruitment", in Chinese Communist Politics in Action, ed. A. Doak
Barnett (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1969), pp.
155-215; and Ying-Mao Kau, "The Urban Bureaucratic Elite in
Communist China: A Case Study of Wuhan, 1949-1965", in Chinese
Communist Politics in Action, ed. Barnett, pp. 216-70.

(3) This discussion draws on Kjeld Erik Brodsgaard, "From
Lions to Foxes: Party and Cadres in China in the Post-Deng Era",
unpublished manuscript, 2006.

(4) During the 1960s, this was actually one of the basic arguments
underpinning Franz Schurmann's pioneering work on China, Ideology
and Organization in Communist China (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1968), p. 1. More recently, this argument was made by Andrew
Nathan, David Shambaugh, Elizabeth Perry and Sebastian Heilmann, among
others. See Andrew Nathan, "China's Resilient
Authoritarianism", Journal of Democracy 14, no. 1 (Jan. 2003):
6-17; Sebastian Heilmann and Elizabeth J. Perry, eds., Mao's
Invisible Hand: The Political Foundations of Adaptive Governance in
China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011); and David
Shambaugh, China's Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation
(Berkeley and Washington, DC: University of California Press and Woodrow
Wilson Center Press, 2008).

(5) It should be noted that, in this article, we are not concerned
with new economic and social elite formations such as the private
entrepreneurs and managers in foreign-funded enterprises. These are
important new social strata which the current leadership is trying to
co-opt by recruiting them to become Party members. This attempt to bring
new social strata into the elite underlines that we are dealing with a
relatively open pattern of elite recruitment in the Chinese case.
Classical elite theorists emphasised that only by being able and willing
to absorb new elements and layers would a given power elite (e.g.,
Pareto's "governing elite" and Mosca's "ruling
class/political class") be able to prevent regime change and
thereby its own demise. See Pareto, The Mind and Society, vol. 3:
Sentiment in Thinking (London: Jonathan Cape, 1935); and Gaetano Mosca,
The Ruling Class (New York and London: McGraw-Hill, 1939).

(6) See, for example, David M. Lampton's study of six
individuals who held top government and Party positions in the immediate
post-Mao era, in his Paths to Power: Elite Mobility in Contemporary
China (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies,
1986); Cheng Li and David Bachman's study of the social background
and career pattern of 247 Chinese mayors in "Localism, Elitism, and
Immobilism: Elite Formation and Social Change in Post-Mao China",
World Politics 42, no. 1 (Oct. 1989): 64-94; and Cheng Li's and
Lynn White's analysis of the composition of the 15th Central
Committee in Cheng Li and Lynn White, "The Fifteenth Central
Committee of the Chinese Communist Party: Full-Fledged Technocratic
Leadership with Partial Control by Jiang Zemin", Asian Survey 38,
no. 3 (Mar. 1998): 231-64. Other studies of the CPC Central Committee
include Xiaowei Zang, "The Fourteenth Central Committee of the CPC:
Technocracy or Political Technocracy", Asian Survey 33 (Aug. 1993):
787-803 and David Shambaugh, "The CPC's 15th Party Congress:
Technocrats in Command", Issues and Studies 34, no. 1 (1998): pp.
1-37. See also Alice Miller's and Cheng Li's article in China
Leadership Monitor, e.g. Alice Miller, "The 18th Central Committee
Politbureau: A Quixotic, Foolhardy, Rashly Speculative, but Nonetheless
Ruthlessly Reasoned Projection", China Leadership Monitor 33 (June
2010), and Cheng Li, "China's Midterm Jockeying: Gearing Up
for 2012: Cabinet Ministers", China Leadership Monitor 32 (May
2010).

(12) Actually, classical elite theorists such as Wilfredo Pareto
and Gaetano Mosca also seem to indicate a differentiation between two
strata in the elite. Pareto argues: "So we get two strata in the
population: (1) A lower stratum, the non-elite, with whose possible
influence on government we are not just here concerned: then (2) a
higher stratum, the elite, which is divided into two: (a) a governing
elite: (b) a non-governing elite". In this Paretian sense, the
leading cadres would form the governing elite. See Wilfredo Pareto, The
Mind and Society, vol. 3, [section]2034. For a discussion on
Mosca's theory in relation to a possible "second
stratum", see Tom Bottomore, Elites and Society (Harmondsworth, UK:
Penguin Books, 1966), p. 11.

(13) Giddens distinguishes between open and closed elites with high
or low integration. As the Chinese power elite have a relatively open
pattern of recruitment and a high level of integration, it is a
"solidary elite" in Gidden's definition of the concept.
Moreover, as the power of the Chinese elite seems to be concentrated and
as the issue-strength of its power must be characterised as broad, it is
an elite which holds autocratic power. See Anthony Giddens, The Class
Structure of the Advanced Societies (New York: Harper & Row, 1975).
One might add that as new social groups and strata such as private
entrepreneurs and non-CPC cadres make it to the elite, it will
increasingly turn into an oligarchic mode of power-holding (limited
issue-strength).

(14) See Zhonggong zhongyang zuzhibu, Zhonggong dangshi yanjiushi,
and Zhongyang dang'an guan (Central Organization Department of the
CPC, Research Office of CPC Party History, and Bureau of Central
Archives), Zhongguo gongchandang zuzhishi ziliao, 1921-1997, fujuan 1
(Material on the Organisational History of China's Communist Party,
1921-1997, Appendix, vol. 1) (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe,
2000), pp. 1325-432. For a discussion of this material, see Kjeld Erik
Brodsgaard, "From Lions to Foxes: Party and Cadres in China in the
Post-Deng Era".

(16) The Chinese state comprises three main institutional
components: administrative organs (xingzheng jiguan), public
institutions or public service units (shiye danwei) and economic
enterprises (qiye). Shiye danwei include primary schools, secondary
schools and universities, hospitals, healthcare organisations, research
organisations, and organisations in culture, art and mass media. They
are different from administrative organs in the sense that they do not
have administrative power over other administrative bodies, and they are
different from economic enterprises in the sense that they are not
profit-oriented. Therefore, the translation of shiye danwei is sometimes
rendered as non-profit organisations. See Lam Tao-Chiu and James L.
Perry, "Service Organizations in China: Reform and Its
Limits," in Remaking China's Public Management, ed. Peter
Nan-Shong Lee and Carlos Wing-Hung Lo (Westport, CT: Quorum Books,
2001), pp. 19-40. See also Kjeld Erik Brodsgaard and Chen Gang,
"Public Sector Reform in China: Who is Losing Out?"
(forthcoming).

(41) On the concept of "competitive authoritarianism",
see Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, Competitive Authoritarianism:
Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2010).

Kjeld Erik Brodsgaard (keb.int@cbs.dk) is Professor and Director at
the Asia Research Centre, the Copenhagen Business School. He received
his PhD in Modern China Studies from the University of Copenhagen. His
current research interests include public management in China, the civil
service system and administrative reform, cadre and personnel
management, Party reform and Party-state-business relations.

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